13 tips on how to take care of your digestive system

Take a minute before you eat any meal

Eating when stressed is a common cause of bloating, which many of our clients think is normal because it happens day in, day out. But it’s not, and you can reduce it if you calm your system before eating. Taking a few deep breaths replaces the arousal-based nervous system associated with stress with the calming parasympathetic nervous system. When this is activated, digestion can work properly again.

Gargle for two minutes a day

Digestion starts in the brain when the vagus nerve, running between the brain and the gut, sends signals triggering the production of stomach acid and digestive enzymes. Many people with poor digestion have a weak vagal signalling process. There are a few ways to strengthen it: you can sing or gargle for two minutes each day, or use a tongue depressor to stimulate your gag reflex two or three times.

Leave 12 hours between dinner and breakfast

The gut lining consists of a single layer of cells that replenish every 72 hours, but this repair cannot take place effectively if your gut is working hard on digestion at the same time. Leaving 12 hours between meals gives a clear period for the gut to focus on repair and replenishment. But do not fast for the sake of your gut – it sends the body into shock and overburdens the liver.

Hydrate

The most effective way to improve gut health is to drink more water. The gut is a long slippery tube, and for good gut function you need to keep that slipperiness, which will happen if you are hydrated. But do not hydrate with sugary drinks – they simply feed less healthy gut bacteria in the bowel. I’m also wary of smoothies because of the raw food they contain. Raw food takes one and half times more energy to break down than cooked. In a healthy gut that’s fine, but if your digestion is taxed it can trigger problems.

Love your gut

If you are constantly uncomfortable, you can quickly come to resent your gut. One of the first things I ask clients to do is turn that around. Think of those symptoms as telling you something is not right and giving you a chance to fix it. Once you adopt that mindset, trying to find the solution to a problem seems more manageable.

Change one thing at a time

Clients often tell me they feel better after giving up everything at once – gluten, dairy and sugar, for example – and so feel that they must do so for the rest of their lives. But most people have one issue that leads to 70 per cent of their gut symptoms – your focus should be finding and eliminating that one trigger before you try anything else.

You don’t need to poo daily

The idea that you need a daily bowel movement is simply not true for 75 per cent of us. Normal bowel activity is classed as anything more than three times a week and fewer than three times a day. And nor does it have to be a “perfectly formed” stool – normality is anything from putty to Maltese's. So long as you pass it easily it is OK.

Keep a food diary

But be warned: often people are so sure certain foods are behind their symptoms that when they study their diary they merely look for proof of their beliefs. This may result in cutting out foods they don’t need to, which in extreme cases can lead to malnourishment. Look at any food diary with an open mind, or ask a dietitian or digestive health specialist to do so for you.

Consume fermented foods

Traditionally these were always part of our diet: we would eat raw milk or cheeses made from it that would re-inoculate our body with good bacteria that the gut needs to thrive. Now, though, we rarely re-establish this via our diets. I recommend adding such foods as sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, kombucha, tempeh or fermented pickles to your daily meal plans.

Avoid sugar

It has a profoundly adverse effect on the gut. Sugar feeds harmful bacteria which then cause bloating and all manner of damage to the gut lining. And it is not only the sugar found in sweets and chocolate – be wary of concentrated doses in energy drinks, fruit juices and many low-fat foods.

Symptoms are not always food-related

I have seen people who have been fighting poor gut health with various diets for years. To me, this means the root cause of the problem has not been identified. People often fail to consider that they might be carrying a parasite, and 70-80 per cent of the people I test with unresolved gut symptoms have one. If you have poor digestion but do not know why, undertake a stool test to check for anything unwanted.

Avoid processed food

Protecting gut bacteria is key to good digestive health and good health overall, yet there are chemicals, additives, genetically engineered ingredients and sugars in processed foods that can have a negative impact on gut bacteria and the gut lining in general. It is OK to have the occasional processed item, but if the majority of your diet is made up of them you are putting your gut health at serious risk.

Add a little salt

Low levels of stomach acid are behind many of the gut problems we see. High-quality unprocessed sea salt, such as Himalayan salt, will not only provide you with the chloride your body needs to make hydrochloric acid, it also contains more than 80 trace minerals necessary for optimum biochemical performance. Sauerkraut or cabbage juice is also a strong – if not the strongest – stimulant for your body to produce stomach acid. Having a few teaspoons of cabbage juice before eating – or better yet, fermented cabbage juice from sauerkraut – will do wonders to improve your digestion.




Source:/www.telegraph.co.uk/